Loading Events

Alessandra Voena, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University

14 December 2011 @ 16:00

 

  • Past event

Details

Date:
14 December 2011
Time:
16:00
Event Category:

“German-Jewish Emigres and U.S. Invention”

abstract

After Hitler took power in 1933, scientists who had at least one Jewish grandparent were dismissed from German universities.  Many of them moved to the United States; their patents make it possible to trace research fields in which U.S. invention benefited from the arrival of German-Jewish émigrés.  Difference-in-differences analyses compare changes in U.S. patenting in research fields of émigrés with fields of other German chemists, who did not move to the United States.  These analyses suggest that U.S. invention increased by 30 percent in fields that benefited from the arrival of émigrés.  Instrumental variable regressions that use the pre-1933 research fields of dismissed scientists as an instrument for the research fields of émigrés confirm that émigrés had a large impact on domestic invention. Such estimates suggest that selection into immigration and research fields may have been negative, so that OLS estimates understate the actual impact of émigré scientists on U.S. invention.